But Kara was not in her tent, as the judge learned after verifying with three different fairgoers where and which it was. Not in her tent, or else suspiciously silent. The doorcords were tied, the charm knotted tightly. Judgework gave Alrathe the privilege to call through closed curtains, but neither the first nor second call evoked so much as a rustle within.
Unlike many far-traveling merchants, Kara seemed to delight in blending with local customs. Where others protected their tents with exotic charms from distant places, like badges to announce their calling, Kara used a new charm of Elder Mage Evandisir’s making. Alrathe guessed she had bought it in Lyn Forest and would eventually sell it again as part of her trade goods. Meanwhile it protected her property very well without setting her apart in this neighborhood, and no lesser magic-monger should be disgruntled with her for having bought an elder mage’s charm in preference to anyone else’s. Perhaps, in adopting local customs, she interpreted that of knotted doorcords so strictly as to refuse answering even a judge who called in.
But Alrathe doubted it. Some sound of movement should have signified her annoyance. Probably she was about her business. Alrathe believed that traveling merchants liked to sell off their old goods during a season’s early fairs and concentrate during the later ones on replenishing their stock. Also, they could well find rainy weather more profitably spent buying than selling. Merchants must buy in any case, for it was half their craft. Other folk often needed to be tempted by a ledge of goods displayed in bright sunlight or they might not buy at all, even fairgoing.
* * * *
Sometime today, High Wizard Talmar’s globe should reach once again the hour of yesterday’s banquet. Not wanting to miss that, the judge stopped at the toymaker’s tent.
A low conversation progressed sporadically inside, but the doorcords were still untied, so Alrathe pulled back the curtain. Torin sat on his traveling chest, bent forward and pressing a globe to his forehead. The storycrafter who delighted in bold embroidery and delicate tales, Dilys, sat cross-legged in front of him, holding a tablet and watching the globe. Even a lifelong celibate could sense shared duality almost palpable, and Alrathe thought, These two… But the toymaker wants Sharys?
“Is it?” Torin was asking.
“No,” Dilys replied. “So far just my own face. Speaking backwards, I think.”
“Maybe the emotion needs to be spontaneous.” He sighed, lifted his head and raised one hand as if to make Talmar’s gestures over the globe, but caught sight of Alrathe and stood. “Cousin Judge.”
“Cousin Torin. Cousin Dilys, I think?”
She also had risen to her feet. “I’m glad you remember my name, Cousin Alrathe. I think I’ve seen you in my audience sometimes?”
“Yes, I’ve enjoyed your tales at several fairs, when judgework did not intervene.” Alrathe looked at Torin. “You’ve been experimenting with your own globe?”
The toymaker nodded. “I caught his First Name-Lengthening dinner once. Not quite by accident, but I can’t seem to do it again at will.”
“We watched very carefully that once, however.” Dilys handed Alrathe the tablet. “Your list, Cousin. Some of the food was too small to see very well, but we tried to check everything against Torinel’s memory.”
Alrathe opened the tablet. Names of festive foods were slashed in hasty letters on the right-hand waxboard. The left-hand board had a list of common foods, many of the names enclosed in boxlines, some separated by gaps.
“I tried to write the base foods in corresponding spaces on the left,” Torin explained. “I boxed those I’m not sure about. Many of them, I don’t think I ever knew. I’m sorry. Father and Mother prepared most of the meal.”
“This may be a help, nevertheless.” Alrathe could have wished for greater completeness, and these lists might need rewriting so the user could compare base and transformed foods at a glance; but clearly the toymaker had done his best—with the storyteller’s assistance. “Can you also mark which feast foods, if any, were transformed from unusual bases?”
Torin drew in his breath as if embarrassed. “Most of the boxes close in usual base foods, Cousin. I made my list more by common magical practice than true—that is, specific—memory.”
“I understand.” Alrathe scanned the list, attempting a preliminary comparison with what foods Sharys had named earlier this morning beside Talmar’s bed. Olives—carrots, boxed. Whitenuts—parched corn, unboxed. Powderflour wafers—cabbage leaves, boxed. Citrons… “Citrons are usually transformed from crabapples, then?” asked the judge.
“Yes.”
Sharys had transformed yesterday’s from small potatoes. Of that Alrathe was sure. But what base had she named for yesterday’s dewmelons? “And dewmelons are commonly transformed from small pumpkins,” the judge went on, noting Torin’s box.
“In late fall. Earlier in the season, from eggplants or redmelons, as I remember. Generally, we—I mean magic-mongers—try to start with as similar a base as possible. Should I have listed them more completely?”
“No. And whitenuts are usually made from something other than parched corn?”
Torin reached for the list. Alrathe gave it over and watched him frown at it. “Yes. Whitenuts—parched corn, that’s usual. I didn’t box it because I was sure of that transformation. It was one of my own that day. We should have figured out more complete notation. I have more tablets. Shall I make a better copy?”
Alrathe would prefer to do the copying. Lists were generally more useful when charted by their user. And it seemed little part of judgework to intrude longer on whatever tender tension these two wove between themselves. “Let me take the tablet for now,” said the judge, holding out one hand, “while you rest your brain from this particular problem. You might sort your memories of last night. Let me take Talmar’s globe, too. It hasn’t reached yesterday’s dinner yet?”
Torin gave back the tablet and Dilys fetched Talmar’s globe. “No,” she said, “it still seems to be reflecting the high wizard alone in his tent last night. Better put it in a carrying bag—I imagine it’s too big for your pocket?”
“Much too big.” Alrathe smiled.
Taking the globe from Dilys, Torin rolled it into a bag and handed it to the judge. Alrathe closed and pocketed the comparatively small tablet, took a firm grip on the bag, exchanged good-byes, and left, closing the doorcurtains carefully on the aura within the tent.
And yet, mused the judge, proceeding toward the scholars’ area, perhaps it was nothing else than deep friendship.
* * * *
The other traveling merchant, Ulrad with the exotic but overtight garments, was coming out of Merprinel’s tent as Alrathe passed.
“Father Judge!” cried the merchant, jumping back as if they had been about to collide. There had in fact been no such danger, and Alrathe looked at the merchant in surprise. Ulrad blushed a little and amended, “Mother Magicker?”
“Cousin.” Alrathe smiled, climbing above the temptation to add “skyreader,” which would probably have been the merchant’s next guess. “You were correct, however, with ‘Judge.’”
“Ah, yes! Of course! Deep red for judges, blue for magic-mongers, purple for skyreaders—hard to tell apart sometimes, you know, when you let your robes fade out.”
“Blue, green, silver, or gold for scholars of magic,” said Alrathe. “In various shades, depending on the degree. But all magic-mongers wear the white star on their left cheek. We simple skyreaders and judges have no such mark, and no such complicated scale of degree.”
“Yes, yes. Strange-looking star. Box with two cross-lines through it, more like your number six drawn a bit carelessly. Not the way they draw stars in some other far places I’ve been.” The merchant shifted his carrying-bag to one elbow and gestured at some of the embroidered spangles on his fitted overtunic. “Well,” he added, taking his bundle back into both arms, “I’ve just bought some fine mirrors—paid every pebble Sister Mirror-maker priced ’em at, too. A bit expensive, in my judgment, but wo
rth it, worth it. Fine crafting. Now I’d better get ’em back to my own tent, Cousin Judge.”
“I was hatching the hope you might drink a cup of hot herbwater in my tent and answer some questions for me, Cousin.”
The merchant fussed with his grip on the carrying-bag. “My mirrors, Cousin Judge…”
“You’ll have only a few extra steps to carry them, and no one will steal them from beneath our chins.”
“The path’s getting wet. Slippery. Might be hard enough carrying them safe to my own tent already.”
“Leave them with Merprinel until the rain stops and the ground dries,” Alrathe suggested. A moment ago Ulrad had seemed ready to chat about different customs in various neighborhoods, and the judge wanted to milk that mood for a list of comparative values, as of orangestone pendants and citrons.
Ulrad changed his grip again. “Short questions, Cousin Judge? Short answers?”
Suspicion was not a tool Alrathe enjoyed using. If Ulrad seemed without reason nervous and fussy, it might be no more than his character, knobbled by who could say what customs in places far distant? Still, if Kara were suspected, so should Ulrad be for many of the same reasons. “Short questions, Cousin,” said the judge reassuringly. “Some of the answers may be long, but uncomplicated. I had hoped to ask them of that other traveling merchant this morning, but finding you first, it occurs to me that you may know trade principles equally well. Cousin… Ulrad, is it not?”
“Ah—Trade principles? General questions about trade?” By the birdlike puffing of his broad chest, the merchant was not only reassured, but flattered as well. “Yes, yes, I’ve been rounding these lands eight or ten years longer than that Kara; I fancy I understand general principles ten or twenty years’ better. Yes, Ulrad it is.”
He repositioned his bundle once more so as to rub the drycharm at his neck, one of his few articles of local costume, before he stepped out from beneath Merprinel’s awning into the rain. He neither mentioned his newly purchased mirrors again nor acted on the suggestion of leaving them with honest Merprinel awhile, but carried them very snug in one arm and linked the other in Alrathe’s as they walked on to the judge’s tent.
Chapter Nine
Talmar seemed to be recovering. There was that much, at least. Torin had been able to see little difference, but Sharys said she could find improvement. She continued as Talmar’s chief nurse during the afternoon; as junior magicker she would have attracted the smallest audience to Vathilda’s magic show. And yet, the toymaker thought ironically, Sharys would have been less clumsy than I. He was helping gather moneygems to buy Talmar natural comforts for his convalescence. That was some salve for his conscience. Unfortunately, it smeared.
Torin had been starting to tell Dilysin at last of that strange midnight interview with the statuette of Ilfting the Dwarf, when Sharys came to his tent. Maybe he should have tied the doorcords upon Dilys and himself, but on a day when news of his brother could come at any moment… The storyteller had politely left him alone with the conjurer, knowing his hopes. But Sharys had come only to beg him to sit here all afternoon, in the Scholars’ Pavilion, displaying skills he had stopped studying twenty years ago. Sharys had left, Dilys had not returned, and the toymaker had spent the rest of his morning in long failure to compose his thoughts. About midday, feeling no hunger, he had boxed his globe for safe carrying, filled a bag with statuettes and other small toys, left his tent with doorcords knotted around the charm, checked on his brother’s condition, visited Alrathe’s tent to tell the judge where he would be and to start Talmar’s globe in its backward review once more, Alrathe having had another chance meanwhile to study yesterday’s banquet.
Then Torin settled into the Scholars’ Pavilion with Vathilda, Hilshar, and the two skyreaders. Skyreaders would not usually help with magic-mongers’ shows, but since this one was for the specific benefit of a suffering fellow student, Laderan and Iris agreed to collect the audience’s payment.
So far in the alcove for private showings Torin had entertained five buyers, one at a time. They seemed equally awed by his successes and amused by his clumsiness. As early afternoon wore on toward middle afternoon and the toymaker grew better adjusted to the knowledge that they came to watch a curiosity, he began wishing he had eaten some lunch after all. He poured a cup of cold water and transformed it into milk, took a handful of parched corn and transformed it into nutmeats. When his next buyer was gone, he would take his few minutes’ rest to quit the alcove and get some hot beverage.
His next buyer pushed aside the curtain and came in. It was Dilys.
She said, “I just passed a little boy with a very little rabbit—about as big as a prune—and it was alive.”
Torin nodded. “Transformed into animation. It’ll wear off sooner or later. I explained that.”
“It looked like a rabbit of Torin the toymaker’s design.”
He nodded again and drank some milk.
She sat and put her hands on the small table between them.
“Yes,” he said, waving at one shelf of the left-hand cupboard, “I brought along some of my toys for the chance of selling them. I sell them for the same prices I would ask anywhere else. The price for transforming them into the appearance of life is included in the small stone the buyers paid to see a private display of the toycrafter half-scholar trying to craft magic.” His adjustment to magic-mongering for this one afternoon was gone, and he felt ashamed. “The small stone for the private display goes to Talmar. The price for any toys I sell stays in my own pocket. I try to make it clear to my buyers that their new toys won’t stay alive very long.”
Dilys looked toward the pile of nutmeats near Torin’s hand, then toward the cupboard shelves. “Do you also do food transformations?”
“Yes.”
“Then change a couple of those small potatoes into citr—into little cakes for me. I paid my small stone. I didn’t try to persuade Iris to let me see you as a personal visitor.”
He chose two potatoes, laid them on the table, put his hand on them and tried to concentrate. One turned into a small cake. The other turned into a citron.
“Well.” She scooped them to her side of the table before he could offer to correct the mistake. “Fine. My tongue rather tingled for citrons anyway.”
“Better eat them quickly. They might untransform at any time.”
“What do I owe for the potatoes?”
He waved his hand in negation.
“If other people pay the usual price for toys,” said Dilys, “I assume they also pay the usual price for base foods.” She put two large stones on the table.
He picked one up and looked at it with the absorption of a mind trying to avoid more personal thoughts. Plain granite, but the carving, though worn, was as delicate as that generally used on the semi-precious small stones and precious pebbles. A moneygem carver who loved the craft had made this. “Vathilda supplied most of the food,” said Torin. “So she’ll get the pay. One stone’s enough for two potatoes.”
“Then transform something for me to drink. Some red wine.”
He poured a cup of water and transformed it. There should be no charge for water, but when Dilys determined on generosity one needed equal determination to debate it with her. Torin put both stones in Vathilda’s box.
Dilys sipped the wine and shook her head. “No. I don’t want wine after all. Too depressing in rainy weather. Can you change it into cider? Mild cider.”
He complied, wondering if the wine had been sour. He too had noticed how wine could increase melancholy, but was her mood so depressed?
She tasted the cider and nodded. “Much friendlier.”
“Your storytelling this afternoon?”
“Went very well, considering. It’s surprising how many people came to hear stories when they could have chosen Vathilda’s magic show instead.”
“And the half toycrafter–half conjurer.”
“I didn’t say that. They could have spent their moneygems to help a sick student, not
to enrich a group of preening storytellers. Well, you still have a good-sized audience out there watching Vathilda. Maybe our pavilions will trade audiences about midafternoon.”
He picked up a nutmeat and rolled it between thumb and forefinger. “Maybe people sense that your tales are more real than our transformations.”
She ate half her citron in one bite. “Then they sense more than I do. Well, I paid a fine moneygem to see some of your display transformations.”
He looked at his toys.
“No,” she said. “You didn’t craft them to come alive. Show me some traditional magickers’ skills.”
He took another small potato, transformed it successfully into a blue egg, held the egg for three breaths of concentration, and pinched the shell apart. Raw yolk and clear slid out to plop on the table.
“I have a feeling,” said Dilys, “that started out right but didn’t quite finish as it should have.”
“The feat is to transform the egg into a full-grown bird inside its shell. When you break the shell, the bird flutters out.”
“And when the transformation unknits?”
“Sometimes, apparently, this one doesn’t. When a skillful enough magicker uses real eggs. Or else the bird grows younger. Or changes into the same kind of bird that would have hatched from the natural egg—when a magician hatches a wren from a chicken’s egg, for instance. It must be some kind of full-grown bird small enough to fit inside the shell.”
“At worst, I suppose the danger of a falling mess isn’t that much greater than when natural birds fly overhead.” She put what remained of her citron into her mouth.
The toymaker grinned. “Less. The birds flutter out and down to the table. They look fullgrown, but they haven’t learned to fly. When wizards and mages do this trick at ceremonies, they put fullgrown flying birds in bags or baskets, transform them into eggs ahead of time, then transform them back into birds. The bags or baskets stay eggshells until after the display. It’s a much more complicated trick. Though even the simple magician’s version seems to be more than I should have attempted.” He touched the raw egg and changed it into a piece of jellied candy, broke it, and offered half to her.
At Amberleaf Fair Page 9
