Imager

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  All guilds had secrets, or at least their practitioners did. Master Caliostrus had ways of combining waxes, oils, and pigments that he had sworn others did not know, and revealing such secrets could cost an apprentice or a journeyman his position, not to mention a stiff flogging. But … death? I tried not to swallow. I failed.

  Master Dichartyn offered a crooked smile. “One advantage of dealing with someone older is that you understand fully the implications of what I’m telling you. Let me explain. We are not cruel, and contrary to what people may say, we do not arbitrarily or otherwise kill young imagers. Very few imagers face disciplinary hearings. Most who leave by the Bridge of Stones do so because they made a mistake in imaging. You have been a journeyman portraiturist. What will happen if you mix paraffin, oils, and waxes over a very hot flame—without care?”

  “You’ll get a fire.” I wasn’t about to mention possible explosions.

  “Or worse.” He nodded. “Now … what would happen if an imager attempted to image all three right on a stove or in a fire?”

  I winced.

  “Exactly.” He paused. “Now, that’s really not a good example, but it should give you an idea of what can happen. There are many substances that should not be combined in imaging, and that is why you need to study the books you received and follow instructions most carefully—especially as you become more experienced.”

  I couldn’t help but frown in puzzlement at his last words.

  “In imaging,” he explained, “the more you learn to do, the closer you are to great danger, from many sources. You may not understand this now, but for your own safety, please believe me until you understand why it is so.”

  There was no mistaking the earnestness or the direct concern in his words, but I did wish that he had not used the paraffin example, because it suggested that he had at least a suspicion that my imaging had led to Master Caliostrus’s death. Yet … if he believed that, why would they accept me even as a beginning imager?

  Abruptly, he stood. “That is all for now.” He extended a folded paper, the map, I presumed. “Before you explore, please write those notes and bring them back. Knock on my door, once, then wait.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He nodded, then turned and left me holding the map.

  I walked slowly back to my new quarters, and I managed it without looking at the map. There I settled down at the table desk.

  Writing the letter to my parents was hard, but better than having to tell them in person what I planned before I knew whether the Collegium would accept me. If I’d been rejected, what could I have said? Besides, then Father would have come up with another of his sermons on what was foreordained and how it was clear I was not meant to be a painter or an imager and how I shouldn’t have tried to escape my calling as a wool factor. Still I spent so much time trying to get the words just right that there was less than a half glass left before noon by the time I handed the letter to Master Dichartyn.

  “You spent some time on it. Good. I’ll have it delivered this afternoon. Oh … you also have a letter box in the rear corridor outside the dining hall, next to the boxes that hold the newsheets. You don’t have to pay for them, but you are expected to read them—regularly. By this evening, your letter box should have your initials on it—IP-RH. That’s your position followed by the first two initials of your name. If someone else has those initials, you might have three or four letters following your position.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  Master Dichartyn just nodded. “Tomorrow morning. Here.” Then he turned and closed the door to his study.

  With the map in hand, I began to navigate my way to the dining hall. I had gotten up early and eaten nothing except some bread I’d pilfered from the kitchen on the way out. The dining hall was within a larger building at the west side of the quadrangle behind the administration building where I’d first entered the Collegium. It was not nearly so large as I had imagined, and it held but three tables, a small table set crosswise across the hall, and two longer tables parallel to each other and perpendicular to the smaller table. There was no one at the short table when I entered the hall just before the bells struck noon, but a number of younger imagers stood around the table on the right.

  I eased toward a redheaded young man. “Is this the table for the imagers primus?”

  “For us lowly primes, it is. You’re new, aren’t you?”

  “About as new as one can be,” I admitted. “I crossed the bridge this morning.”

  “I’m Etyen.”

  “Rhenn, or formally, Rhennthyl.” As I stood there, I realized that several of the figures were young women. I also saw two older women coming through the arched doorway, one of them gray-haired, and walking toward the adjoining table, and a third, also gray, moving toward the masters’ table with a white-haired man. I must have stared because Etyen spoke again.

  “There aren’t that many women imagers, but Maitre Dyana is a Maitre D’Structure. She’s old, though.”

  “How old?”

  “She must be forty-some … or even older.”

  Somehow, I didn’t think of someone my mother’s age as old, but Etyen couldn’t have been much more that fifteen, and he must have come to Imagisle right out of a grammaire.

  “Where did you come from?” I asked.

  “From Asseroiles.”

  Asseroiles was more than three hundred milles to the northwest. “Are all the imagers in Solidar here at the Collegium?”

  “Oh, no, but most of them are. There are three other Collegia. There’s Mont D’Image to the north … well, it’s actually northwest of Asseroiles, somewhere off the Nord Pass through the Glaces, and Westisle outside the harbor of Liantiago, and Estisle near Nacliano.”

  That did not seem like many imagers, not for a land the size of Solidar, stretching close to three thousand milles from coast to coast. How had the Council kept it all together before the steam engines of the ironway had made land transportation faster than horse and wagons?

  “Rhenn here is new,” Etyen announced.

  Several of the primes looked at me. Most didn’t, and people sat down as they came in without any blessing. I thought that odd.

  “What room are you in?” asked Etyen.

  “Fourteen, second level, south wing.”

  Someone nodded.

  “… Corsarius’s room …”

  Several primes looked hard at the fresh-faced youth who had murmured the words.

  “What happened to him?” I asked.

  “Bridge of Stones,” replied Etyen in a low voice, adding even more quietly, “We don’t talk about it.”

  Not talk about it? When someone died?

  “You didn’t come here straight from the grammaire?” asked the prime across the table from me. “Oh, I’m Lieryns.”

  “No. I’ve been an apprentice and a journeyman portraiturist. I didn’t realize I could image until a little while ago.”

  “Sometimes, it’s like that.” Etyen nodded. “But I always knew.”

  “You always know everything,” murmured someone.

  There were low laughs from more than a few primes, and as I looked down the table, I was relieved to see that there were a few who looked as old as I was, if not older.

  “You were a journeyman. You actually painted real portraits, then,” observed Lieryns.

  “Some,” I replied, looking at the large bowl of rice being passed down the table. Behind it followed some sort of dish in sauce. “Mostly of girls and cats.”

  “Cats?”

  “My master said I had a talent for painting cats, and I don’t think he liked dealing with girls and cats. I did do one portrait of a factorius.”

  At that point, the rice arrived, and I served myself a solid helping, as well as of the tomato-sauced fowl chunks that followed. If the lunch fare was any indication, I was going to be better fed than I had been by Madame Caliostrus.

  Sometime later, after several mouthfuls of food, and some swallows of a fair red plonk, I took
another look around the table before speaking. “I haven’t had a chance to read anything. What do we do, besides study?”

  “Whatever we can,” replied Lieryns. “I’m helping Master Schorzat in the chemistry laboratory, but mostly I image little things out of glass for his experiments.”

  “I thought there was a counselor-advocate to the Council named something like that.”

  “That’s his brother,” someone said. “Scheorzyl. Master Schorzat said his father wanted everyone to know the two were brothers.”

  My eyes went to Etyen. “And you?”

  “I’m still working on making shapes with metals. They’re harder.”

  I couldn’t say that I learned all that much at lunch, but everyone was certainly friendly. Afterward, I left the dining hall and, map once more in hand, began to explore and try to memorize where everything was. No one seemed in the slightest interested as I wandered all over Imagisle and the buildings of the Collegium that Lundi afternoon. I still worried about why no one talked about it when someone died.

  17

  Imaging is based on what is, but, without great care, what an imager feels can change what is.

  As Master Dichartyn had intimated, I had to wait to see him on Mardi morning. I sat on a bench outside his study reading the thin volume on the Collegium. I’d made it through fifteen boring pages when he opened the study door and an older imager walked out, somewhat stiffly.

  “You may come in, Rhenn.”

  His study was small, not more than three yards by four, with a long narrow window, open just slightly. The space held two enormous bookcases, a small writing desk, two filing boxes stacked on top of each other, and two chairs, one with a cushion and arms and one straight-backed and not too comfortable. I sat in the straight-backed chair.

  “Before we start, I’d like you to know that one of our messengers delivered your letter to your parents yesterday, late in the afternoon. They were relieved to know that you were safe.”

  “Thank you, sir.” Mother was relieved at my safety; Father was more likely relieved I hadn’t embarrassed him or gotten into some difficulty that might have cost him in some fashion.

  “Now … when was the first time you realized you might have imaging abilities?”

  “Not until around the first of the year.” It was actually just a bit earlier, but not much. “I was working on a portrait, and I couldn’t get the area around the eyes right. I could almost see how it should be—and then it was right, even with my brushstrokes, as if I’d painted it just as I’d visualized it. I still wasn’t sure that it was imaging. I thought maybe I’d painted it and then imagined that I’d imaged it.”

  “And …?”

  “Maybe a month later, I was working on another portrait, and it happened again.”

  “And you didn’t come to us then?”

  “No, sir. I’d heard about how imagers had turned the alabaster walls of the Council Chateau into stone harder than granite, and how they could image parts of machines into being. All I could do was image just the slightest bit of oil paint.”

  “All?” Dichartyn laughed. “There are some seconds that can’t do that and never will.”

  “I didn’t know that, sir. It seemed very insignificant to me, and I was beginning to get commissions—the kind where patrons asked for me personally.”

  He nodded. “What did your master say?”

  “I never told him about the imaging. When he talked about the imagers, he was quite clear that I should never want to be one, that most died young, and most of the rest never amounted to anything.”

  “He said that?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I can see where that might give you pause, Rhenn.” He leaned back in his chair and fingered his clean-shaven chin.

  All the imagers were clean-shaven, I realized, unlike artists, most of whom had beards or mustaches, if not both. In that way, at least, I did fit in. I’d never liked beards.

  “So why did you finally seek us out?”

  “Master Caliostrus died in the fire. No one else would take me on. My father wanted me to become a wool factor. I thought that my small talents for imaging might gain me a place here.”

  “At least you have no grandiose delusions about your ability.” Master Dichartyn laughed again, not totally unkindly, I thought. “It’s very good that you did. Before long, you would find yourself imaging in ways that could be most destructive. Perhaps you already have and do not even know it. Sooner or later, that imaging would have been noticed by others.”

  “Not know it, sir?” I had an idea of what he meant, but I wasn’t about to say so.

  He smiled, knowingly. “You know more than you reveal, Rhenn, but I will explain, because you don’t know as much as you think.”

  I accepted the rebuke silently.

  “All people have daydreams, or dreams or nightmares, or wishes. We wish that things would appear or disappear, but what happens if the person who wishes that is an imager?”

  The lit lamp! I swallowed.

  “Did that recall something, Rhenn?”

  “Ah, yes, sir. Sometime after the first time I imaged the oils, I had a dream, and I dreamed that it was so dark that I could see nothing, and I wanted light. The lamp on the chest woke me, because it was lit, and I thought I’d wicked it off. I never believed that I’d imaged the light. I’d just thought I’d been so tired …”

  “You are very fortunate you came here before any of the imaging you did came to light.” Master Dichartyn’s voice was stern. “You have quarters to yourself. Do you know why?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Every set of quarters in the Collegium is not only stone-walled but has a layer of very thin lead plate between the two courses of stone and under the floor tiles. The windows are all glazed with leaded glass, and those windows which open are designed with louvers so that there is no direct passage of air—or thought—in and out. Do you think that the Collegium went to that expense merely for your comfort?”

  “No, sir.” I had a very uncomfortable feeling about where his words were leading.

  “No imager ever sleeps with another person, even his wife, and I mean sleep, not lovemaking. The Collegium is here not only to educate and improve imagers, but to protect others from those very same imagers. Yes, we have privileges, and those who become masters can live quite comfortably, and those who do marry can live in pleasant dwellings on the north end of the isle, but never think that we do not pay a high price for those abilities and services that we provide. Imagers who must travel are accompanied by obdurates, and, if they cannot sleep within iron or lead, must take strong drugs of the type that do not permit dreaming when they sleep. Those who serve in the Navy have lead-lined cabins, very small cabins, because lead is heavy, and weight is critical on many vessels. Those who marry and live here have special separate sleeping chambers in their dwellings, and must indeed live here unless they have the wealth to build similar quarters elsewhere in L’Excelsis. You can never spend an entire night with a woman you love, or any lover, for that matter, not unless you remain totally awake, and when you are tired, even that could present a danger to her, especially if she has malleable tendencies.”

  Master Dichartyn paused, letting me take in his words.

  “One of the reasons for the initial restriction to Imagisle is so that you come to understand what damage even the least able of imagers can inflict upon others. A second reason is that you need to understand that we are so few that we could be wiped out to the last person. Yes, some of us do have the ability to kill or change others, and you are one of those who already possess that ability, whether you know it or not. But while we are individually powerful, for the most part, no one of us could face even a moderately large group of armed men and survive. We therefore do our best to show the Council our goodwill, our self-discipline, and our indispensability to Solidar. No imager can be allowed to jeopardize the others. Is that clear?”

  “Yes, sir.” It was more than clear; it was fright
ening. I wanted to ask about the imager who had lived in my quarters before me, but decided it would be best to wait on that.

  “Good.” The smile returned. “I’m going over to the laboratories this morning. I’d like you to accompany me. Then, this afternoon, I will give you a short talk on the introductory aspects of chemistry, and you will begin to read that volume. Tonight, after dinner, you are to read the first section of the book on the government and history of Solidar. You will find it is not like any history book you have read before, and I will be asking you questions about what you have read in both volumes when we meet tomorrow morning.” He bounded out of his chair. “Now … let us go to the laboratories. …”

  Already, I was beginning to wonder about the two sides to Master Dichartyn’s being—the stern and the cheerful. He seemed to switch from one to the other both quickly and comfortably, but the change was more than a little disconcerting to me.

  18

  Learning requires unlearning.

  On Meredi morning, right after breakfast, I picked up a newsheet and checked my letter box, not expecting to see anything, and found an envelope there. I recognized my mother’s handwriting. I opened it quickly and began to read.

  Dear Rhennthyl,

  Your father and I were most relieved to know that you are safe at Imagisle. While your father had hoped that you would see your way to following his example in the wool trade, he accepts the fact that you must follow your own destiny. We both wish you the best in becoming an accomplished imager. In the note that Master Dichartyn sent accompanying your letter, he said that you had great promise. He also said it could be several months before your initial training would allow you to leave Imagisle, but that, beginning in Avryl, you could have visitors on Solayi. I look forward to that.

  I swallowed as I finished the note. The way I read it, Mother was relieved for me, and, since I wouldn’t be a wool factor, Father was glad to get me out of his hair.